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Hudson's Revenge - Looking Forward With The House That Bonk Built

The
Hudson brand has serious history in the game industry. Hudson Soft
began operation in Sapporo, Japan in 1973, and was Nintendo’s first
third-party publisher. As such, the company has enjoyed a longstanding
history and collaborative spirit with Nintendo which continues to this
day.

In Japan, the company was responsible, along
with NEC Electronics, for the release of the PC Engine line of home
consoles, called the Turbo Grafx 16 in the West. The console was a
humongous success in Japan, though not so much in Western markets,
launching too late to make a significant impact. The subsequent
console, the PC-FX, did little to help the company, with some 64 games
released, as other companies such as Sega with its Sega CD and Philips
with its CD-i also foundered with FVM-based game models.

Since
that time, Hudson has moved more operations into software, eschewing
the hardware scene almost entirely. After many years not operating a
U.S. office, Hudson opened Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Hudson
Entertainment in 2003, headed by John Greiner, who has been with Hudson
for over two decades. He spent the grand majority of those with the
Japanese parent company.

Hudson in the U.S. is
focused on mobile entertainment (games and ringtones, specifically),
but has recently branched out into console publishing. As the gateway
to the Turbo Grafx, Hudson’s titles are appearing on the Wii Virtual
Console in droves, and Hudson is taking this opportunity to re-launch
the brand in the U.S. with more force than has been seen from the
company since the early 1990s.

In this exclusive,
lengthy interview with Hudson Entertainment president John Greiner and
director of marketing John Lee, a lot of ground is covered, from the
difficulties of launching Japanese IP in the West, to the decline and
subsequent reinvigoration of the parent company, to the company’s
relationship with Konami, of which Hudson is now a subsidiary. With
occasional divergences into obscure bits of Hudson knowledge and a
discussion of executives riding tiny trains, this interview should tell
you almost everything you need to know about Hudson for the near future.

GS: How do you feel about Bomberman: Act Zero’s reception in the U.S.?

John
Greiner: The problem is, I think, when you look at the way the Japanese
intended the game to be marketed, and how it was marketed, there is a
disconnect. And I think it’s an unfortunate thing that happened,
because Japanese Hudson and Konami U.S. don't speak to each other. So
that needed to be properly explained, because the game is made as a
multi‑player battle game, which is what the Japanese Hudson people
thought American people really wanted.

Mind you,
the game is really made for the Japanese market, but they do look to
see what American tastes are. So I think, basically, without knowing
those key selling points, then the message was lost, and if you play
that game as a multi‑player game over the 'net, it's great. So in
Japan, you can take a game like that and you can tell the market
exactly what it is, and they will respond in kind. But you have to tell
them. That's the problem. That kind of thing happens. But anyway...

John Greiner

GS: So how long have you been with Hudson? I know it's been a long time.

JG: Eighteen years.

GS: Eighteen years. What were you doing before that?

JG: I started my career at Hudson, actually. I graduated from college and went to Japan, and found Hudson, and never left.

GS: How did you wind up there?

JG:
I was actually traveling, and met the owner of the company. Those were
the early days of the Turbo Grafx, so Hudson had just released ‑‑ I
should say NEC had just released ‑‑ the PC Engine, and they were going
to bring it to America. And Hudson was, of course, a very important
factor in the technology, the software, everything, because the whole
machine is Hudson's that they then licensed to NEC, so Hudson was a
very important partner for NEC.

The NEC guys
were Americans, and Hudson was a very Japanese company, and they needed
somebody to help this transition. So Mr. Kudo, the chairman of Hudson,
had to do business with the chairman of NEC Home Electronics, an
American guy. And there was a big cultural gap, not just communication
but cultural.

So
he hired me for that, and we just built the business as it rolled
along, because it really was a big deal at the time. There was so much
success in Japan, and suddenly here was the idea to bring it to
America, of course, and they had a lot of potential, so it was a big
deal for Hudson and it was a big deal for NEC.

GS: So was NEC involved in the Japanese launch?

JG: Yeah.

GS: Ok, I thought so.

JG:
So Hudson never released any machine, we just licensed the technology;
and we continued to support Nintendo while we did that.